I Lived to Tell It All

by George Jones

  I almost had as much gratitude a year earlier.

  Something happened then regarding the handful of some truly talented young country singers on the scene today. My record producer, Norro Wilson, brought a song to me called “I Don’t Need Your Rockin’ Chair,” about an aging man who is a little slower at, but not finished with, his craft.

  The song was my attitude set to music, and Vince Gill, Mark Chesnutt, Garth Brooks, Travis Tritt, Joe Diffie, Alan Jackson, Pam Tillis, T. Graham Brown, Patty Loveless, and Clint Black joined me on the biggest-selling song I’ve had so far in the 1990s.

  Yet despite that all-star lineup, airplay was limited and the tune only rose to number thirty-four. Nancy got on the telephone and, in typical devotion to my career and me, personally asked program directors around the nation to play my song. Her loving efforts shouldn’t have been necessary. They were hardly effective.

  I have a theory as to why. It’s because George Jones, the lead singer, was a senior citizen. The country music industry today is an industry where youth will be served. So we have artists making records about life who haven’t yet lived much life.

  I look at the shape of contemporary country music, and I’m saddened. There has never been a time when country radio was so disrespectful of its elders. I suppose the same can be said of the country music industry as a whole, including the record companies.

  With the exception of MCA and, more specifically, Bruce Hinton, chairman of MCA’s Nashville division. What a limb he went out on when he signed me to the label a few years ago. I can’t think of another record company executive who would have signed a senior artist, particularly one with a reputation for misbehavior. And Bruce has stuck by me. He’s a man who is more interested in his artists’ art than in their age.

  Bruce still has a recording deal with Bill Monroe, who is in his eighties, because Bill is the father of bluegrass music. No other major label honcho in Nashville would give Bill or me a deal.

  I asked Tom Carter to make Bruce the last person to whom he spoke in connection with the writing of this book. Bruce told Tom that he signed me, and continued to record me, because he thought I was the world’s best country singer and because he would never have been able to forgive himself for not documenting my work when he had the power to do so.

  I’m forever indebted. With the exception of Nancy, Bruce has done more to prolong my career than anybody. If someone ever makes a movie about my life, I won’t approve the script unless someone is cast as Bruce Hinton.

  I won a major music award from the Country Music Association two or three years ago. I had gone to pee at exactly the same time the award was bestowed. So when I was announced as winner, Nancy leaped from her seat and accepted it on national television, telling the audience I was in the john. I was delighted that all of America got to hear about my urinary habits. But from the platform she thanked Bruce Hinton. I was so pleased about that that I wasn’t even angry that I missed my acceptance.

  I’ll say one more thing about Bruce. He’s a genius of the art of selling records. He knows how to move records. Here I am a radio artist without radio airplay who is selling albums into the hundreds of thousands of copies. That’s because Bruce knows how to promote through media other than radio, such as print press, television, and significant concert exposure.

  Think about this. As of this writing, Bruce has sold more than one million albums by a group called the Mavericks. He has done so without the group’s ever having had a Top 10 record.

  The man knows how to promote.

  * * *

  Rock ’n’ roll music, historically, has been fickle. Its star singers made millions of dollars, then were forgotten by rock radio in about five years. Country radio, on the other hand, used to play its seasoned singers right in with the new for years. When I was starting out, radio played my songs among those by Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, Bob Wills, Gene Autry, Hank Snow, and many others.

  But look how country and rock have changed roles.

  Rock radio today plays Tina Turner, Rod Stewart, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Bob Seger, The Eagles, and others in full rotation. Those people are in their late forties or early to mid-fifties.

  Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, and Charley Pride, meanwhile, can’t get country airplay. Yet if it weren’t for those guys and artists like them, today’s young singers would have had no role models. Those veterans paved the young artists’ road to success. Many stations that won’t play veteran acts wouldn’t even be on the air if it weren’t for interest generated by the older artists in their stations a few years ago.

  But country radio doesn’t seem to care. I worry about the future of a country music industry that has no respect for its history.

  In February 1994, Nancy and I drove thirty miles through Nashville’s worst ice storm in recent history to the Bradley Barn Recording Studio, owned by Owen Bradley, the legendary producer of hits by Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, and many others during the 1960s and 1970s.

  Bruce had come up with the idea for me to record a duet album with many of today’s hottest stars and some of the industry’s most established, including Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs, Alan Jackson, Marty Stuart, Emmylou Harris, Tammy Wynette, Mark Chesnutt, Mark Knopfler, Trisha Yearwood, Dolly Parton, and the world’s best rock ’n’ roll guitarist, the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards.

  Electricity went out at our house the night before the first day of the recording session. With no heat while temperatures fell below freezing, I feared I would get sick and be unable to do the session. A lot of artists who had changed their touring schedules would have done so in vain if I failed to appear. So Nancy got up during the night to pile blankets on me to be sure I stayed warm. She got up repeatedly thereafter to be sure they hadn’t come off. I was reminded of the songwriter who, years ago, wrote “Little Things Mean a Lot.”

  After the duets album was released, radio didn’t know what to do with it. I mentioned earlier that it was reluctant to play the first single from the album, “A Good Year for the Roses,” by Alan Jackson and me. Alan was white-hot on radio, and programmers wanted his voice. But some didn’t want his if they had to take mine. The vast majority of Alan’s other single records have gone to number one. His duet with me became his first single not to crack the Top 50.

  Yet on June 5, 1995, at the annual Music City News Country Awards, the song was named “Vocal Collaboration of the Year.” That award, given on prime-time national television, is a people’s choice award. The fans do the voting and have to pay for each vote by dialing a 900 number that shows up on their phone bills. It’s doubtful that any radio programmer, or entertainment industry big shot, casts a vote. They wouldn’t spend their money.

  I was happy. The fans liked what I had done despite the absence of airplay. I care a lot more about my loyal fans than I do the come-lately radio programmers who are boycotting veteran artists.

  Alan accepted the award and called me to the stage. I had no idea he and I would win, so I had already left the show after having presented an award to somebody else. Marty Stuart came on after Alan and told coast-to-coast viewers that George Jones had gone home early to watch a rerun of “Matlock.” Actually, it was “The Andy Griffith Show.” And although I’d seen Andy many times before, his show was far more interesting than most of the stuff I hear on modern country radio.

  Keith Richards and the Rolling Stones were in the middle of a standing-room-only concert tour when the Bradley Barn album was released. It was the Stones’ first tour in ten years. They were drawing upward of fifty thousand people each night. Someone suggested that MCA release the duet between Keith and me as the next single and forget about pairing me with one of the popular young stars.

  “We don’t want to do that,” said an MCA executive. “No one in radio wants to hear two old men on the radio. Isn’t that a shame?”

  Despite the confusion, the album’s sales will likely have topped half a million by the time this book is published. I wonder what it
would have done with hearty promotion and radio airplay. I wonder how little it would have done had it not been for Nancy’s and Bruce’s tireless efforts and the national press they generated. Thank God the newspapers and magazines still have an interest in artists with gray in their temples.

  I want to stress here and now that I’m thankful, above all else, to still be working, with or without radio support. A whole lot of recording artists don’t have the privilege of still working without broadcast of their recordings. I’ve told the fans I’ll tour as long as they come to see me, and I mean that.

  But that doesn’t eliminate my sense of injustice for my buddies in the business. I just don’t think it’s right that some gorgeous young girls who sing flat can get airplay today while Loretta Lynn and Connie Smith can’t even get record deals. Country music, the music of the common man, has become uncommonly ruthless in the way it treats the proven greats.

  I hope I can be around in a few years when today’s record company and radio decision makers are getting older themselves. I’d be curious to see if they’ll be tossed aside and, if so, how they’ll handle it.

  In 1995 I went into the studio with Tammy Wynette for the first time in seventeen years (with the exception of the one song we did at the Bradley Barn session). The 1995 effort was an album called One. I had said years ago that I’d never record with Tammy again, so this experience taught me to never say never.

  Recording with Tammy, in many ways, was like old times. Our ability to harmonize was still there, and we went on a thirty-city tour, including some stops overseas, that began on June 6, 1995, at Nashville’s annual Fan Fair.

  Twenty thousand fans sat in a driving rain to watch Tammy’s and my return to the concert stage. Many could have gone home, but I didn’t see one leave. I was touched.

  Tammy and I put a song on the album called “Look What We’ve Started Again.” Some record promotion folks hoped the title might suggest that Tammy and I were getting back together romantically. They thought such rumors might sell albums. As I’ve said before, I don’t care what people think if it will help sell albums.

  I may never again say never about recording together. But regarding our romantic reunion I will forever say never.

  The album’s coproducer was Nashville’s hottest and certainly one of its most talented, Tony Brown, who produces Reba McEntire, George Strait, Vince Gill, Wynonna, and more. Its other producer was Norro Wilson.

  We went into the studio for six days to do ten songs, then returned to rerecord some of the vocal tracks. The sessions were fun and filled with goodwill. Yet they had an air of sad uneasiness.

  “We might as well have as much fun with this project as we can,” said Norro, “because we already know that radio isn’t going to play anything we record.” That statement was repeated openly several times during the next few days inside the control room. “Damn, this is going to be a good record,” observers repeatedly said. “What a shame it won’t get on the air.”

  Someone kiddingly suggested that we alter the photographs for the cassette and compact disc jackets. It was thought that we might put Tammy’s and my bodies under the heads of young fashion models. “Then the people at radio will think you all are a new act and play the record,” said one studio musician. “Hell, they’ll put it on their playlists without even listening if they think you’re young.”

  One music magazine said that the reunion of George Jones and Tammy Wynette was to country what the reunion of the Beatles would be to rock ’n’ roll.

  I don’t agree, but a lot of smart folks felt that way about an album featuring Nashville’s best studio musicians behind singers whose separate careers have sold more than 60 million records. There’s something wrong when even the album’s producers thought the project was commercially dead in the water before it even got to retail shelves.

  Time will tell.

  Nancy, bless her heart, immediately started calling radio people to ask them to play the record. She wanted me to do a bunch of radio interviews. I refused.

  “Why should I kiss radio’s ass?” I asked.

  I feel badly for Tammy and a lot of talented people who worked very hard making that record. We’re all mighty proud.

  Instead of making a new album, I’d have been more content to be at home—cutting the grass at the only place I’ve ever owned mortgage-free in my life. (If you think I’m not in high cotton, let me tell you that I am. I have my own brand of pet food—George Jones’ Country Gold Pet Foods. And the stuff is a runaway hit. Who needs radio when there are pet stores?)

  Riding a lawn mower over my acreage is the most relaxing thing I do, along with feeding my cattle. Mowing and feeding are unlike the entertainment business with its crooked road of lies and deception. When you mow you don’t wonder which direction you’re going in, you can follow the path. When you feed, you don’t wonder about bullshit, you can see it.

  These days Nancy and I spend a lot of time doing nothing with our time. We walk hand in hand over our grassy slopes and return to watch the sun set in our pastures and over our bonded souls.

  We are two people whose lives are as one.

  At sixty-four I’ve turned twenty-one. I have found peace, and peace has found me.

  Mine has been a stormy, but more recently, wonderful life. I hope to see a lot more of that life—now that I love it at last.

  Chapter 27

  I have to be one of the most fortunate people in show business. Many entertainers my age see their careers coming to an end, yet I’m on the brink of one that’s brand new.

  It appears I’m about to get my own prime-time talk/variety show on The Nashville Network.

  We’ll shoot pilot versions in 1998. If the network and I are pleased, the shows will go into full production, and we’ll do thirteen original, one-hour programs. The shows will be rerun, giving us a total of twenty-six air dates for 1998. The programs are tentatively scheduled to run each week immediately after the Statler Brothers Show, the sixty-minute variety program that runs on Saturday nights and is the highest-rated offering on TNN.

  That’s a great “lead-in” for my show.

  I’d love to see the George Jones Show catch on so I can work television more and the road less in upcoming years. I did 120 one-night engagements in 1996, and am scheduled to do ninety-six in 1997. That, plus the television show, is enough. I’m too old, and the miles are too long, for many more of the one-nighters. I’ve been a sailor on the cement sea for almost a half century.

  The concerts I do in 1997 will be inside smaller halls. I don’t like to play the 20,000-seat rooms because I can’t always draw enough people to fill them. To do so, I have to be billed with a younger, hot act. Such acts charge a lot of money to concert promoters, and many promoters who sell 15,000 to 18,000 tickets lose money because of inflated performance fees. I think the young acts have gotten their performance prices so high that they’re putting promoters out of business.

  I don’t want any part of that.

  I’m going to use local bands to open my shows in 1997. I can still draw enough fans to earn my fee, and the promoter will make a tidy profit. Then, if I’m lucky, he’ll ask me to come back and play again.

  I’ve learned to look at the long-term in my career.

  My television show, if it becomes a reality, will be country with a capital “C.” Maybe my earlier remarks were too hard on some of the young acts. I think a lot of them record some of the junk they do because that’s what their producers order.

  But I’m going to tell the viewing audience that they’ve tuned into a country show and if they don’t want real country music, they should change the channel right now.

  Reckon that will make the sponsors happy?

  Any young act with a record deal will be invited to appear on my show. And the veteran acts, of course, will always be welcome. My only requirement is that the acts keep their music, and its performance, country. I don’t want people coming on with elaborate choreography or giant choirs. I don’t want smo
ke and mirrors. I want artists to sing the kind of music they’d sing if they could sing whatever they wanted—as long as what they want is country.

  I’m going to try my hand at interviewing, too. I’ll have a writer who’ll research the artists’ histories so I can talk to them intelligently. I want the performers to be relaxed, and the viewers entertained.

  I’m going to give it my all, and I hope the fans know that what they see, good or bad, is sincere. I really think I can do talk television, but I don’t think Jay Leno or David Letterman have to worry about their jobs.

  One of the things I appreciated most about 1996 was the fact that I acquired a second home. It’s a comfortable condominium in Coco Beach, Florida, where Nancy and I go to get away from everybody.

  We lived there for three weeks before I let her hook up the telephone, and three more before I let her give out our number. She had a fax machine, her only link to the outside world.

  The place is on the water, and we can sit on the balcony and watch the waves.

  Nineteen ninety-six brought disappointment for me in that my estrangement from my two sons was solidified. The two sued me for record royalties they felt were owed to them. Their mother, my late wife Shirley, took half of the songwriting royalties I earned through the time of our divorce. After she died, my two sons thought they were beneficiaries. They thought the songs had earned millions of dollars.

  I had to give depositions, and we reached a settlement. I could say it was painful to fight my own offspring in a lawsuit, but that would be a gross understatement. I had been an absentee father, but I can’t undo what I did in my reckless years. And I would never add fuel to the flame of my deficient fatherhood by purposefully trying to swindle my children.

  I sat for what seemed like hours giving sworn testimony that resurrected a lot of painful memories. I’m not very high on the boys’ favorite persons list, and I deeply regret that. Perhaps things will be better among us in our next lives.